{"id":2560,"date":"2010-08-13T01:57:51","date_gmt":"2010-08-13T08:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=2560"},"modified":"2010-08-13T01:57:51","modified_gmt":"2010-08-13T08:57:51","slug":"the-truth-about-those-tax-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/08\/13\/the-truth-about-those-tax-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"The Truth About Those Tax Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The big fight brewing in Washington at the moment is whether or not and for whom to extend the Bush Tax cuts.  The Obama plan calls for extending them for everyone except the top two percent.  Republican plan include extending them for everyone, extending them for the top two percent only, and extending them for nobody, if the rich don\u2019t get them too.  The Obama plan is the best one.  This is why.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"13taxcuts\"<\/a> This week, the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation released an analysis of what would happen to the tax code if the Republican proposal to extend all of the Bush tax cuts were adopted. The tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of the year, and the Obama administration has proposed renewing only those for the lower- and middle-class.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will find Republicans resisting very strongly<\/a> any bill that allows taxes to be raised on any segment of Americans today,\u201d said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), while Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) has said the House GOP will throw \u201ceverything we\u2019ve got\u201d into preserving the tax cuts for the wealthy. And too many Democrats \u2014 like Sens. Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Kent Conrad (D-ND) \u2014 have been cowed into expressing a willingness to extend the tax cuts temporarily for a year or two.<\/p>\n

According to the JCT analysis, extending the cuts for the wealthy \u2014 which affect two percent of the population \u2014 for just one year will cost $36 billion<\/a>. Obama\u2019s plan, meanwhile, really focuses the tax increase at the very top of the income scale<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The biggest burden would fall on the 608,000 taxpayers who make between $500,000 and $1 million and the 315,000 who earn more than $1 million; the first group would pay $6.5 billion more, or an average of almost $10,000, and the second group would owe $31 billion more, or almost $100,000 on average, the analysis said.<\/span><\/p>\n

That may seem like a lot, but even under Obama\u2019s plan, the very rich will be paying less in taxes than they did in 2001<\/a>, since they would be paying a lower marginal rate on their first $250,000 in income. As the New York Times noted, \u201ctaxpayers with income of more than $1 million for 2011 would still receive on average a tax cut of about $6,300 compared with what they would have paid under rates in effect until 2001.\u201d For those earning between $250,000 and $500,000, meanwhile, the increase is \u201crelatively low,\u201d said Roberton Williams, an economist with the Urban Institute. \u201cIt\u2019s less than 1 percent<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

So Obama\u2019s plan has taxpayers still paying less than they were at the beginning of the decade, while adding $36 billion less to the deficit than the GOP\u2019s preferred policy outcome\u2026 [emphasis original<\/span>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

Graphic Credit: Ezra Klien<\/a><\/p>\n

Rachel Maddow and economist Austin Goolsby discuss the above chart and the tax cuts.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

From what I understand, tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans only generate fifty cents in economic activity for every tax dollar lost to the government.  Those funds would be far more productively invested in infrastructure spending.<\/font><\/p>\n

Republican claims that ending the tax cuts for the rich will cost US jobs is a lie.  The rich aren\u2019t investing their money in US production.  They are investing it in Wall Street speculation and production in the Asian wage-slave markets.  Republicans want the tax cuts for the rich to continue, because the rich are the only people Republicans truly represent.  They are the party of No Millionaire Left Behind!<\/em><\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The big fight brewing in Washington at the moment is whether or not and for whom to extend the Bush Tax cuts.  The Obama plan calls for extending them for everyone except the top two percent.  Republican plan include extending them for everyone, extending them for the top two percent only, and extending them for […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}